The rain did not stop for even a minute over the first week that Zaria spent in the new world. Sometimes, it would lighten to a drizzle. Others it would go so hard, with lightning and thunder crashing overhead, that she worried a tree would come down on her tent in the night. Often times those storms came up so suddenly that there was no chance to move the tent out into the open somewhere, so she either huddled inside and crossed her fingers, or put on her poncho and went to stand out in the middle of the road. She was not sure which option she preferred the least, standing out in the open in a thunderstorm or standing beneath trees that might or might not survive the onslaught. Eventually, constantly being cold and wet became too much, and she fell ill. For several days, she trudged along, walking hours and hours without seeing a soul and passing through the occasional town without speaking a word to another human. It grew harder every night to set up her tent, and getting up in the morning was a chore. Finally, it came to a head one dark day, with the wind howling through the branches overhead as yet another storm that would rival a typhoon blew in. The winds were so strong that her tent stakes kept coming up, so she gave up on hiding away inside her canvas sanctuary and decided to push on, keeping beneath the boughs as much as she could. The world was swimming around her as she ponderously moved one foot in front of the other, and her mind struggled to even acknowledge how difficult movement had become. When several horses approached her on the road, she did not register their proximity until one of the riders dismounted. They were speaking to her, but she blinked slowly at them, each eye lid weighing as much as the pack on her back. Their words made no sense, spoken slowly as though they were a record playing at half speed. Finally, she gave up and tried to move past them, but her feet no longer listened to her, and she found herself falling. The last thing she thought before she hit the ground was, "I think I will take a nap now."
When Zaria Joseph opened her eyes again, she immediately noticed that she felt dry. More than that, she felt warm for the first time since she left the luxurious apartment in City C. A groan escaped from between her teeth, and she tried to turn over, but her body was still not listening to her. A cool hand touched her forehead, pushing her gently back against what felt like a pillow beneath her.
"It's alright, dear," a warm, matronly voice said soothingly. "Your fever seems to be going down, but you need to rest, or it will come back again."
"Where am I?" Zaria tried to ask the question, but her tongue twisted around itself, and it came out as more of a jumble of sounds. Nevertheless, the woman seemed to know what she was asking.
"You are at His Grace, Duke Berber's manor. He and his guards found you along the road somewhere to the east of here and brought you back. You have been asleep for four days now, I was beginning to worry that you might not wake up."
Zaria did not try to respond. The effort to do so the first time was far more effort than she wanted to spend. As the day went on, she slipped in and out of consciousness, sipping broth when she was told to and trying not to be embarrassed when the woman helped her clean up after relieving herself. At one point, she thought she heard a man's voice speaking in the room, a deep and raspy voice that sent shivers down her spine. She could not make out the words, but the familiar and soothing voice she recognized as the woman who was caring for her answered and she drifted back to sleep.
The next morning, Zaria was able to open her eyes all the way. She did not try to move, instead letting her eyes wander around the room where she lay. It was a small room, not much larger than her kitchen back home. There was just enough room for a small bed, which she was laying on, a tiny chest of drawers with her bags sitting atop it, and a little thing that looked like a pellet stove with a bucket of wood beside it and a pipe leading up and out of the wall next to it. After a few minutes of laying quietly, she tried to move her arms and found that they did so easily, even if she felt like they weighed far more than normal. She was just getting to where she was ready to sit up when the little door near the foot of the bed opened up, and a small, round woman walked in.
"Oh, you are awake, I see! Eyes open and everything!" The gentle voice that came out was the one that Zaria recognized from the day before, and she was happy to have a face to put with it. "If you would please, just stay laying down, and I will check you over a bit."
Zaria did as asked and laid still while the woman felt her pulse and rested the back of her hand against the young woman's forehead. "Goodness me, you seem to have recovered almost overnight! That is good news! How do you feel?"
Zaria opened her mouth, but when she tried to talk, only a cough came out. The kind woman reached onto the tray that she was carrying when she walked in and picked up a glass of water, holding it as Zaria took a sip. "I feel alright, just very tired," Zaria said in a weak voice.
"I would imagine so! How long were you out in that weather, to get as sick as you were! You were very lucky his grace happened upon you and decided to bring you back. If it had been brigands or someone of ill repute, then things would certainly have turned out much differently."
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A figure walked into the room, stopping just inside the door. Zaria moved her eyes toward it. At the foot of her bed stood a tall man, easily half a head taller than Gu Cheng if her eyes could be believed, with a slim build and broad shoulders draped with what she could describe as a cape made out of what looked like velvet. Brilliant gold eyes looked out at her from beneath a heavy curtain of hair that was so black it appeared blue. Dark lines curved around the exposed part of his neck, spreading up over his jaw and across the left part of his face in tendrils that resembled the roots of a tree. "She is awake," a raspy voice announced, as though the kind woman would not have known unless she was told.
"She is, your grace," the woman stepped back from the bed and ducked her head down so that her eyes were trained on the ground.
" And she is staring at me," he continued, his brows furrowing. Thin lips pressed together beneath an aristocratic nose. The older woman reached over and squeezed Zaria's hand, whispering to lower her eyes. Zaria did so, apologizing out of habit.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, "I didn't mean any offense."
The woman did not respond, and the man, the lord of the manor she was in, and her apparent savior, made a wordless sound of dismissal.
"When she is able to stand, get her a uniform and send her to attend me. The girl you have there now tires me." The man left with those words, leaving a smell like burnt sandalwood lingering behind him.
"I'm sorry," Zaria apologized again, " I didn't mean to offend anyone by looking at him. I don't really know the etiquette here..."
The old woman chuckled, her brown eyes rising back up now that they were alone again. "Pish posh, girl, everyone knows that Duke Berber does not like anyone to look directly at him, on account of the curse."
"Curse?" Zaria pushed herself upright, immediately falling against the wall next to her with the effort.
"Of course, the curse!" She stared at the young woman who looked exhausted and confused, her brow wrinkling beneath a short mop of curly grey hair. "Haven't you heard of the curse of the Duke of Berber?"
"I'm not from...anywhere near here," Zaria said simply, noticing for the first time that she was in some kind of linen shift, and she blushed thinking about somebody else dressing her.
"I should say, not to have heard about the Duke of Berber! And those clothes and things that you had with you were so odd." The woman bustled about, adding some more wood to the fire in the little stove. "The guards recognized the thing strapped to your bag as a tent, but the materials were not like anything they had seen before. That and some of your clothes were hung up in the drying room downstairs, but they had to be washed first because they smelled of mildew. How long were you outside for things to get that bad?"
"I don't know," Zaria answered as she watched the woman move about. " I think I slept for ten nights in my tent, but everything was a little out of focus by the end. It could have been more."
"Goodness me! And you were sleeping in your tent every night? Did you have nowhere to get warm or dry? No wonder!"
Over the next several days, Zaria grew stronger and was able to get up and move around her room with relative ease. The older woman, who she learned was called Matron Teague, was in charge of the staff of the manor. Zaria felt even more upset when she found out that not only had she been taking up so much of the woman's time for nearly a week, but that she has been taking up the time of the busiest woman in the whole manor. When she apologized profusely, she was waved off as though it meant little.
"His grace ordered me to nurse you back to health, but I enjoyed doing so. There is no need to apologize. I brought you a uniform to wear. Tonight you can wear it when you go down to eat your dinner. I will show you where. You can't be staying in here and eating, now can you? Tomorrow morning, his grace will expect you to wake him at 7 am with breakfast and then clean his room after he leaves for the morning. When he returns, he will need a bath drawn with hot water brought up from the kitchen, but you must not linger once the bath is prepared. He will bathe himself. Do not look directly at him. Keep your eyes on the floor at all times. And refer to him as 'your grace' or 'sir'." Matron Teague twisted her apron anxiously.
"I don't mean to sound ungrateful, and I do want to pay you back for all the care that you have given me, but how long will I need to stay here? I would like to know so that I can plan out the rest of my trip."
"Oh, Miss Joseph, you will stay until his grace releases you from duty," she responded with a smile. "I wouldn't dare to guess as to what his decision would be. That is not my place. I am just a servant like you are."
Something about the way she answered did not sit well with Zaria, but she did not push the issue and decided that if it took too long she would bring the topic up directly with the Duke if needed. She was not one of his subjects. She thought it unlikely that he would try to detain her for long. Her hand wandered to her good wrist, and she broached another topic that she had been meaning to bring up. "When I was out on the road, I had a bracelet on my wrist. It had a small star hanging from it? Do you by any chance know what might have happened to it?"
"Oh yes, I saw that when you were first brought in. His grace took it with him that day. He said he would keep it safe for you." The rotund little woman left the room with a smile, and Zaria let her own polite smile drop off. She looked down at the uniform laying on the bed, her eyebrows drawn down in the middle. She did not like how things were going in this new world, and she had a bad feeling that things were not going to be getting better any time soon.